"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Game of Thrones 8.2: Apologies and Memories



Among my favorite scenes in tonight's episode 8.2 of Game of Thrones, in which every scene was a memorable gem, Jamie was pivotal in both of them:

First, at the beginning, when Jamie refuses to apologize for what he did to everyone, including Bran, and Brienne comes to his defense. 

And then, a little later, when Jamie apologizes to Bran, and Bran explains he is no longer Bran, but something else, a living keeper of all memories and human history.

Apologies are obsolete with the Night King and his dead forces approaching.   But memories are everything.   Bran understands this - as does Sam - so Bran offers himself as bait to draw out the Night King.  As Sam explains so well, death is absolute forgetting on the part of the individual who has died.  Therefore, the Night King, in his quest to destroy humanity, needs to destroy the keeper of all human memories - Bran.  Just as the Nazis burned books, and millennia earlier, retrograde forces burned the ancient Library of Alexandria.

This is the essence of the Night King's quest.  But though almost all the humans defending Winterfell and thus humanity - and an impressive force they are, including the newly knighted Brienne, and Arya being with a man for the first time, in two other great scenes - expect to die in the upcoming battle, I'm with Tyrion in being something of an optimism.  Certainly not all of the heroes, male and female, will die.  Is it too much to ask that it be none of them?

One quibble (as always):  why was there no discussion of the dragons in the approaching battle?  We saw the two surviving dragons last week, right?  Where are they now?  And, where exactly is the dragon who is now with the dead?

See you next week.



And see also Game of Thrones 6.1: Where Are the Dragons ... Game of Thrones 6.2: The Waking ... Game of Thrones 6.5: Origin of a Name ... Game of Thrones 6.6: The Exhortation ... Game of Thrones 6.7: Giveth and Taketh ... Game of Thrones 6.8: Strategic Advantage ... Game of Thrones 6.9: A Night for the Light ... Game of Thrones Season 6 Finale: That Library

And see also Game of Thrones 5.1: Unsetting the Table ... Game of Thrones 5.8: The Power of Frigid Death ... Game of Thrones 5.9: Dragon in Action; Sickening Scene with Stannis ... Game of Thrones Season 5 Finale: Punishment

And see also Games of Thrones Season 4 Premiere: Salient Points ... Game of Thrones 4.2: Whodunnit? ... Game of Thrones 4.3: Who Will Save Tyrion ...Game of Thrones 4.4: Glimpse of the Ultimate Battle ... Game of Thrones 4.6: Tyrion on Trial ... Game of Thrones 4.8: Beetles and Battle ...Game of Thrones 4.9: The Fight for Castle Black ... Games of Thrones Season 4 Finale: Woven Threads


And see also Game of Thrones Back in Play for Season 2 ... Game of Thrones 2.2: Cersei vs. Tyrion

And see also A Game of Thrones: My 1996 Review of the First Novel ... Game of Thrones Begins Greatly on HBO ... Game of Thrones 1.2: Prince, Wolf, Bastard, Dwarf ... Games of Thrones 1.3: Genuine Demons ... Game of Thrones 1.4: Broken Things  ... Game of Thrones 1.5: Ned Under Seige ... Game of Thrones 1.6: Molten Ever After ... Games of Thrones 1.7: Swiveling Pieces ... Game of Thrones 1.8: Star Wars of the Realms ... Game of Thrones 1.9: Is Ned Really Dead? ... Game of Thrones 1.10 Meets True Blood

And here's a Spanish article in Semana, the leading news magazine in Colombia, in which I'm quoted about explicit sex on television, including on Game of Thrones.

And see "'Game of Thrones': Why the Buzz is So Big" article in The Christian Science Monitor, 8 April 2014, with my quotes.

Also: CNN article, "How 'Game of Thrones' Is Like America," with quote from me



"I was here, in Carthage, three months from now ..."

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